From 1994 to 1995 i was able to enrol her in my class at the städelschule frankfurt. I saw that she was rapidly gaining in originality in addition to the abstractly expressionist aspect of her talent she also developed an unusual sense of colour, which is not a contradiction.

The colours are applied densely and sumptuously and understood not only as sound but also as substance. baroque, carefree, organic forms are created. music is for her a further field of inspiration. a tendency to synaesthesia is apparent. she paints, animated by classical music, finding the music dramas of richard wagner especially fascinating. her painting has a dramatic, theatrical power. i could well imagine that her intention might be to encompass stage sets, which would not, however, be detrimental to her other painting.

hermann nitsch
class for inter-disciplinary studies at the städelschule, frankfurt/main

Listening with one‘s eyes — seeing with one’s ears

Music is Brigid Ibell‟s most important source of inspiration, colour her most important mode of expression - particularly the colours yellow, blue and red.

The encounter with modern music has become increasingly significant for her work. Music, having the power to address human emotions directly, has thus become a powerful source of new experience and a means of expression.

Brigid Ibell's work has been inspired especially by the Italian composer Luigi Nono and his “open music“, but also by Igor Strawinsky and the minimalist composer Philip Glass. For a considerable creative period she was strongly influenced by Richard Wagner„s compositions - Ring der Nibelungen being central to this. More recently she has turned to the music of György
Ligeti and Luciano Berio.

Her work is not bound by any one stylistic trend. lts hallmark is spontaneous and gesticulatory brushwork, and it is never figurative. Her intention is to transport her feelings onto the canvas.
She declares her choice of colour to be a purely emotional one. In her paintings colour, movement and expression develop from her innermost self, free from external limitations. The opposing forces of introverted mood and the need to create are united in a harmonious whole.
Her paintings are not a sign of sensual perception but the expression of emotional processes.

The idea of a concurrence between painting and music, based on identical experience has existed for centuries. However, around the turn of the century it gained new weight in connection with basic changes in aesthetic values taking place at that time.

In his theory of colour Goethe also assigns characteristics to specific colours. They are emotional triggers. Yellow is characterized as “the colour nearest to light”, a colour which “in its greatest purity always contains the nature of light.“ lt is “positive”, lively and optimistic. On the other hand according to Goethe “it can be said that bIue always contains an element of darkness”, and red is seen as the escalation of yellow and blue.

For Kandinsky, who in the twenties took part in experiments to fathom the effect of colour, internal psychological states were more important than the means used to create them. At a production of Richard Wagner‘s Lohengrin he noticed that before his inner eye sounds and chords were transferred associatively into colour harmonies. Freed from concreteness they could make the “vibrations of the soul“ visible, as music also gives expression to such vibrations in pure sound.

Whether in music or painting, the differences between the various media seemed to have been annulled, in so far as they had the same psychological effect. In place of the idea of art as a closed system came a principle of concurrence which negated genre boundaries, wanting to blend all arts into one (1).

Colours have the same communicative potential as musical sounds with the corresponding psychologicaleffect - a synaesthesia of colour and music. By synaesthesia can be understood the linking of different feelings, the arousal of one sense organ which communicates the experience of synchronous perception to another sense organ.

This synaesthetic point is noticeable not only in the choice of colour but also in the form of the painting. Striking in Brigid IbeIl‘s work is the large format of the paintings, or the smaller pieces placed together to form a larger ensemble. At the same time she appears to want to overcome the barriers of two-dimensionality with her dense, often luxuriant application of paint. Sometimes this impression is strengthened by the use of pigment onto the still damp colour, the resulting mat effects heightening the plasticity of the work. The paint is also often applied right up to the edge of the painting, enhancing the feeling that it could be indefinitely extended.

After the second world war the music avantgarde‘s concept of space was similar to this. Nono, Ligeti and Berio also belong to this era. Compositions are no longer adapted to space, on the contrary space is composed just like all other musical parameters. In this way space becomes audible, and whentransposed to painting, visible. This removal of boundaries and crossing of borders can be clearly felt in Brigid IbeIl’s work.

This is also confirmed in her search for new picture formats: The moving away from flatness in the paintings themselves and the attempt to achieve moreplasticity - the frame mutates to a wall object. Or as the more recent works inbook-format show - making painting not only audible but also tangible - hearing and seeingwith one‘s eyes, touching with one‘s hands. Painting as a complete sensual experience.

Gudrun Heidorn

The Importance of Music and Colour in the Works of Brigid Ibell

Brigid Ibell paints. Painting, as translated from its Teutonic roots literally means "furnished with signs". She makes her marks mostly on large formats or on small square canvases, usually presented in installations of 25 to 40 panels. Observing the artist at work and then glancing at the wall where she has attached the canvas or paper, or even the floor, one sees a myriad of shades, blots mixed with marble dust or pigment.

One finds traces of colour everywhere, on her face, in her hair, under her nails, on her clothes. Struggle is the focus.

One sees the lust, the pleasure, the anguish when she doesn't immediately succeed with a painting, when the thick layered material has to be scraped down or washed out. Nevertheless the work is one entity - every stroke, every space, every move made fits - and it is unthinkable to imagine the work otherwise.
Parallel to colour, the most important element in the work of Brigid Ibell is music. A line runs through the often monochrome surface. Sometimes it moves gently almost unrecognisably. Then it appears as a gesture, a cipher magnetising us into the depths of ultramarine for example, or inviting us to simply reflect. At other times the line becomes a track, tracing its way boldly and dynamically. Which music creates ,,colour sounds'?

Brigid IbeIl listens to music. All music. However, it is the sounds of Richard Strauss, Giuseppe Verdi, Richard Wagner, Luigi Nono, Philip Glass or Luciano Berio which have accompanied Ibell's canvases during the past three years.

Listening, arranging, painting: after concentrated listening the surface composition emerges. She uses red for Dying Violetta (La Traviata). For Wagner's Ring of the Nibelungs she chooses blue, gold dust and green for Rhine Gold, whereas the The Walkyries are portrayed in all hues of yellow. At the end of 1994 an installation of 25 paintings, each 40 x 40 cm entitled Akhnaten was executed to the opera of minimal composer Philip Glass.

At a first glance these paintings portray nature. We are plunged into the fertile region of the Nile Valley in Egypt. Some of the works show the classical three dimensions in water, landscape and skies. Others remind us of palms, mountains and rockfaces. In yet other paintings, the abstraction is so far advanced that we are confronted by only signs and gestures. They stand for themselves. The blue blocks draw the eye of the beholder into an imaginary region of clouds or the seas depths.

For almost all of 1995, the artist was influenced by the drama of Richard Wagner's The Walkyries. During this phase IbeIl chose yellow, sometimes flashy, reminiscent of hot sunny days, at other times greenish hues, conjuring up moods and feelings, of light before a storm and then again the yellow appears almost orange, warm like a beautiful late afternoon in a Mediterranean landscape.

The colours are partially applied thinly and then by contrast sumptuously, splashed onto and moulded into the surface. The works obtain a luminous power through the raw pigments which are not bound by any agents.

The upper surface often depicts a soft velvety structure, reminding us of the powdery wings of a buttertly or of pollen grains. Nevertheless, the compositions do not give the impression of breathlike whisps, instead they are rather dynamic even violent events. Like in Nach der Walküre, this is due to the track running diagonally through the work. In some areas it seems to be crumbling. lt traces circles, marks, waves and small explosions similar to a flow of energy which finds its way through the region of colour intrudingly and heart-wrenchingly.

After yellow, follows blue. Prometeo is the title of the series in which Brigid IbeIl is motivated by Luigi Nono. According to Greek mythology, Prometheus, son of the Titans, forms mankind out of clay and water. In admiration for his capability, Athena goddess of wisdom, breathes life on them. Against the will of Zeus, Prometheus brings the creatures fire and hereby the ability to control the earth. As punishment, Vulcan bound him to a rock above an abyss in the Caucasus mountains, where an eagle diminished his liver daily, after being allowed to regenerate by night. Not till Heracles shoots the eagle with an arrow, is the tortured Prometheus freed from his sufferings.

Prometeo, is for Ibell a bright ultramarine blue wherein in its depths a chopped orange-yellow track runs to the top with brushstrokes coming from the bottom. She finally whirls in and breaks the meditative peace, which often hails from blue, the tone of luring distance. Unlike Yves Klein, blue for IbeIl means not only borderless cosmic space in which one can innerly meditate, but the colour stream drives away the stillness and fills the space with action, vitality and unsuppressable power.

Something new appears in the paintings executed in 1996. Le Grand Macabre by György Ligeti appears. The background of this music drama in two acts is the earth's destruction. Mankind is threatened by the end of the world catastrophe which without noticing it, is being brought about by the individuals themselves. The danger has always been underestimated or even laughed about. The play relates to the Last Judgment, the end of the world which however, does not take place after all since the grim reaper, Le Grand Macabre, is exposed as a clown. lt is the triumph of Eros and of life as a fragmentary moment. In the words of the composer "Death and the future do not matter, there is only here and now." (Burde, Wolfgang: György Ligeti - Eine Monographie, Zürich, Atlantiks Musikbuch-Verlag, 1993, page 219) Le Grand Macabre is also an analysis of people, their sexuality, their hunger for power, their illusions, their insatiable needs and their hopes that cannot be fulfilled. In the end life's lust and desires together are more important than death.

"Fear not to die, good people all
No one knows when his hour may fall
And when it comes, then let it be
Farewell til then, live merrily."
(Ligety, György "Le Grand Macabre", Oper in zwei Akten [Solistensextett])

Nevertheless, the text to this music is not at all happy. For according to Ligeti "a life entirely without fear, a life only in pleasure is actually very sad."(Konold, Wulf: Ligetis Le Grand Macabre - absurdes Welttheater auf der Opernbühne, in: Oper heute, Wien/Graz 1985, page 152) Brigid IbeIl painted to the music and to the once in a while shrill and hectic followups in two phases. Death and transitoriness.
Ibell summarises the composition of Ligeti in these words "it is about life and love becoming more hysterical, crazier." (Brigid Ibell on September 23, 1996) At the same time she says further that she does not occupy herself with more interpretations since she wants to work with the sounds without necessarily being influenced by the literary connotation.

In some of the latest handmade-paper works the free flowing dripping colour is flung on to the surface. What fascinates her here is the approach to this rugged structure instead of her more usual work on canvas. ,,For me the material is essential. I can only work if the basis is the best quality and the structure is right." (Brigid Ibell on September 23, 1996)

Kirsten Kretschmann-Muche